The Art of Building a Basic White Picket Fence

I've just got to cut a few more to finish this section off and uh then we can go back get our screws in and we've just about got the the main part of the fence done okay so we've uh put a bunch more of the pickets on I've actually even done some of the screws we're left with the last picket here uh the space left over I just ripped the picket down to make it work the right way had another ear on the side so that it uh looks the same as all the rest so I'll just uh slide into to position here and I took my string lying down so just eyeball this one up something like that. As we build our fence, we want to ensure that everything is straight and uniform. For this purpose, I use a simple J-go of scraps to make a level guide for hanging the screws.

For all the screws, which I already did with the other pickets, I'm a little picky this way I like it to look straight so I just make up what I call a simple J go of some scraps that we're laying around here so basically all this does its made so it can hang on each picket and I've got pencil marks here and here for the top row of screws and pencil marks here and here for the bottom row so I just Center it up on the picket give myself a little little uh Mark where they're going to be. This method ensures that all the screws are evenly spaced and look uniform, making our fence stand out.

We've got the fence all done maybe I'll just uh the camera wants to go over against the house I'll just show what I did there to finish things up so same idea I just figured out this is going to be a gate and uh you'll see that in our other video I just figured out how the gate was going to work out and then I placed started my pickets over here where I needed to be cut the one against the house and fasten the ball on on the back side if the camera can make it through the gate here oops without falling on the back side you can see I I did the same thing as what we had over there. We've got a flat uh rail we've got a vertical rail down below and I actually did exactly the same thing on the very bottom.

You probably won't be able to see that to fasten those in I used some PL adhesive some uh construction adhesive on top of the post and I used long screws they're uh 4 and 1/2 in or sorry 5 in Long through the post right into the ends just to solid that up you can see the post is moving but you know that block isn't wobbly or anything plus once you put your pickets on it solids it up so okay so that's uh I guess we can come right around back out front get back in the shade where it's a little cooler.

That's our basic white picket fence video uh like I said earlier in the video there's all kinds of different styles and designs you can do with lattice work or uh rails that are exposed all that kind of stuff so pick your design basic principles are are pretty much the same as far as getting your post in and everything. We went 3T deep I like to do that makes your post just a little bit more solid you go a couple feet and after a couple years it gets a little wobbly so so that's good.

So, before you start your project, we need to consider a few things. Looking at your underground utilities is crucial to ensure you don't hit anything like that. Additionally, check with your municipality, city, or local government to make sure you're not breaking any bylaws regarding the height of the fence or how close it's to a street or an alley.

For example, in our area, if you have a pool or a hot tub, there are regulations requiring a minimum 6-foot-high fence with locking gates. It's essential to check these regulations before starting your project, as you don't want to go through the hassle of building the fence only to find out it doesn't meet local requirements.

If you're interested in seeing more videos like this one, be sure to check out our other videos on our website and YouTube channel. We also have a forum where you can ask questions, share your experiences, and learn from others who have built similar projects. The link to the forum is available at house-improvements.com.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Shannon from host improvements.com and today I just want to show you through this video how to build fence we've got a situation where we want to actually erect a piece of fence from the existing over to the house so to do that uh the one of the main things that I U started out by doing was determining obviously where I wanted the fence and uh running a string line across the ground and then marking out where my post locations were going to be now you can see here this would be one of my post locations uh it might be a little difficult to see with the shade here but I've circled the area I put an X and I've actually got a a nail in the ground so that's Center of post so that's my first post coming off the existing fence there's also another post going to be right here on the right hand side side of the sidewalk and then I've already installed the post beside the house so for our fence we're we're basically going to be using 4x4 pressure treated posts in this case our fence is approximately 5 ft tall and we're putting the posts about 3 ft into the ground and concreting them in so you can see like I said I've got the one post already done um the next next uh basic thing that I want to do at this point is I want to uh drill these holes and I'm going to do that by hand and we'll show that uh before you do any kind of fencing or anything where you're digging in the ground you need to contact uh any utility companies have them come out and mark the area make sure there's no gas lines phone uh water sewer power any of that kind of stuff in the area where you're going to be drilling uh you want to definitely stay away from that so make sure you have that all marked out before you start in this case uh we had them come out there's nothing in this area other than uh an accessory water line that goes to a front tap that I found underground when I did that post so uh uh but as far as phone lines and power and gas and any of that kind of thing there's nothing in this area so so we're good to go so uh we'll probably reposition the camera and start out by drilling this first hole so the three different uh tools that were might be needed to do this uh job here today is uh post hole scoop just a normal shovel and then a handheld uh post hole digger uh the reason we're using these and not something uh Power is uh just that these are more likely to be handy for the diyre to get a hold of uh you can rent uh portable augers or have a piece of equipment come in with an augur to drill these holes as well if you have the AC accessibility to do it but uh we're going to do it the oldfashioned way here today and uh that way you can kind of see how it's done so I'm going to start out uh because I've got lots of room here to work uh I'm going to start out with this post hole um augur I guess you'd call it uh the one issue we're probably going to have is we're going to find that we're going to have some roots from this large tree that's right close by so uh we'll just uh deal with those as we come to them if if they develop uh usually uh if you start hitting that sort of thing I can stick a reip saw down in the hole and and uh remove the root out of that area and and keep going so hopefully we don't have too many troubles with that so what I want to do is uh I just I already pulled the nail out of my Center Mark there I want to place the augur rate on that point and just give it a few twists takes a little bit to get it started just concentrate on trying to keep it in in uh your Center Mark area there where you started so now that it's basically started to root itself down into the ground I'm also applying pretty good amount of pressure down as I'm twisting and you can see it just kind of works its way into the ground bringing some soil up when the shovel part of it gets full you can just lift it up and uh toss that soil to the side now you might need some of that soil afterwards so don't uh send it too far away so I'll just continue on like this and uh we'll see if we come across any routes so far I'm only hitting quite small ones so it's it's not being an issue and uh remember I'm shooting to go down about 3 ft so it it does take a bit of time in this case uh we only have two to do here we'll probably speed up a lot of this um uh yeah I think that's all I really need to say I'm just going to get to work one thing that's worth mentioning is as you're using any of these tools we want to be trying to drill or uh dig the most vertical ho hole we can so that we can uh set our post in easily so that's one thing to concentrate on is keeping the shaft of the tool you're using vertical in uh both directions or all directions so that you have a nice straight hole Okay so we've got this first hole complete I don't know that may be an actual time took uh couple minutes really wasn't n too bad other than being out of breath uh right now I'm at about uh 372 in approximately deep so I'm happy with that uh all we luckily ran into was a few small Roots like that that just tore apart as we uh as we Twisted through it we didn't run into any water that can be an issue sometimes you may uh you know hit uh groundwater level or whatever so um if that's a if that's a problem you you need to try to get some of that water out if it's just a little bit of moisture and you're cementing in your post anyways not really a big issue uh if the hole fills up with water well yes you're going to have to try to pump that out or at least Pump It Down get your post in there and get everything set before it fills up too much again um we're drilling uh this this tool here is adjust UST able in the size of the hole basically we're we end up with close to an 8 in hole basically an 8 in round hole uh we're putting a 4x4 post into that so like I said you want to be as vertical and Plum as you can with your hole otherwise you're going to have issues with getting your post in there um as far as putting your posts in and and getting them in place there's a couple different things you can do we're going to concrete ours into place with just some bags of concrete mix for post um another thing you could do is set your post in and Tamp in uh PE PE gravel or uh uh you know rock or something around so you put in a layer Tamp it with a post or a little stick put in some more Tamp it and actually you can get really solid posts that way um we're going to use Concrete in this case um just because that's what I kind of prefer to do and uh with a pressure treated post it's going to last for years and years it'll probably Outlast the rest of the fence the post itself so Okay so we've got our uh our first one drilled here I'm going to go over get that one drilled and then when we come back I'll show actually getting the posts in the holes and uh mixing the smant and pouring it okay so on this hole I just want to show you a couple uh couple um shots of me using this particular tool it's kind of a clam type shovel so what you're going to do is you'd want to uh I'll just go over here in the bare dirt you want to just stab it down in the area you want then you squeeze the handles apart and it actually picks up mouthfuls of dirt so if you were uh you know restricted to the amount of room you had and you couldn't maybe turn the handle on the other Digger that you just watched me use you could use this or maybe you got a lot of loose dirt down in the bottom of the hole you I could stick this down that existing hole and and get that dirt out of the bottom but you can you can do a hole this way too just a little trick here to get started so you just want to stab it in at your location squeeze this isn't a bad idea to uh use this just to get the hole started before you use the other one cuz it kind of gets you a nice clean spot that your uh drill should just go directly into so anyways that's that's using that I don't think I really need to use that in this case but it did did get me a nice spot to uh start this hole Okay so we've got both our holes drilled uh in that other hole we did run into some uh or at least one pretty good size route so I just took the reip saw with the Long Blade and cut that route off so uh not a big deal it's just a matter of getting around it uh next step is I've just thrown the post Loosely in the holes and I put up the string line down here so this string line I moved because before sorry I'm just sitting on my knife here before I was using the string line as a center mark across here to get the hole position so now what I did is I move that string line out to the front edge of the post and I'm using it to get the post all straight in a line uh the reason obviously I can't use the center line mark because the post would be in the way every time so now I can uh get the post positioned over to the line and uh centered up in the hole if you're uh if you're needing to space your post a really specific distance apart then I suggest you maybe cut some uh temporary braces or have your sex some people will buy the sections of fence that are already made up from uh the box stores then you want to kind of use them to gauge the distance this way side to side for your distance of your post but in our case uh there's no real rocket science to where we're going we're approximately 7 ft apart I wouldn't go any more than 8 ft 6 to 7 ft is a nice distance uh uh most of your fencing pre-made products are set up for 8ft sections but uh so anyways we're we're about 7 ft between a post so that you know that isn't too critical in our case so we've got our String Line I've attached it over there on the existing fence and then over on our first fence pole that I put in uh which was kind of why I put that post in uh yesterday was so that we could use it uh without having to put a steak in the ground and all that kind of stuff so we've got it all there to uh give us our our straight line okay so uh I just also want to talk about this little level here that I have and you can buy these at any hardware store just about and it's it's made for going onto fence post so it's got a a level vial that on that side and this side so you can hold your post and check without moving like if you have a handheld level you'd have to you know check this side then check this side and in the meantime the post has moved on you where with this I use a strap to hold it on and I can uh look at this vial get it nice there take a peek over at the other one adjust where I need to do all without having to move a hand level so and at the same time when you're doing all that you're also trying to watch that string to make sure you get the pole over to where it needs to be on the string line so uh anyways that's that's what the level's all about so what you want to do is uh get your uh your post close get your concrete mixed up in the wheelbarrow or a bucket or whatever you're going to mix it in so it's ready to go and uh then fine-tune your post and start putting the concrete in around the hole um some people will uh just open up the dry powdered concrete post mix dump it in the hole and fill the hole with water and maybe prod it with a rod or something uh I guess that works works but it's uh you don't know if you're mixing the whole batch of concrete or not it could you could just be mixing the top two or three inches and the rest is staying dry so it's nice to mix it out of the hole and then place it into the hole so so I'm just going to do that in a wheelbarrow so I'll just move my Barrel out here uh just got to get my water a little closer okay so I got my water a little handier now got a shovel just to do the mixing I'm just going to wet my wheelbarrow down a little bit just so the uh concrete doesn't stick badly to it I'll put on my safety glasses concrete dust can be uh a little corrosive so you don't want to get in your eyes I'm just going to rip the bag open of course all that's blowing right at the cameraman Okay so we've got our uh concrete mix our post mix in the wheelbarrow I'm just going to create a little bit of a volcano in there and uh turn the water pressure down so I don't Splash it and I'm going to add about uh a liter and a half or so of water uhoh got some air in the line there we go and I created that volcano just to kind of hold the water in there and then I just want to use the shovel and turn the mix getting the water all uh mixed in nicely with the powder P we have so you can see how it's starting to mix in there I'll create another volcano I'm going to add about another liter or so you can have this pretty runny need a lot more water than that yet it's a little runny for this uh application it actually works nice for getting it in the hole apparently you can't hear me when I'm scraping uh you want to have this mix pretty runny so it just makes it easier in this case when you're putting it in the hole so just keep turning it so you're not getting any of that power coming up pretty good I'll just add a little bit more so I maybe added uh I don't know approximately 3 L of water or so now this particular post uh mix is a fairly quick setup so I don't want to waste too much time so that looks pretty good to me we'll give it a try anyways so I can go back to my post here just double check that I'm good on my line and I'm good Plum both ways and I'll drop a little bit of mix down there try to get a little bit on each side each side of the post just uh if you get a little bit to start with on each side of the post kind of keeps that bottom from moving on you so we're actually pretty nice here and it's going to I'm sure take more than a bag probably a bag and a half just make sure you aren't pushing your line make sure your uh levels are good I'm a little bit offset in the hole as it worked out so it's a little tighter right on this side but it's all right we can deal with that trying not to get too much dirt going in the hole let SC that concrete off the line make sure I'm not pushing the line okay our bubbles are looking pretty good so I'll add the rest of what was in this bag or in this wheelbarrow in okay so I've got pretty much that whole bag in there now I just want to uh cuz it's hard to see down in there you don't really know what you're doing when you've dropped that concrete and then I'm just going to use this piece of rebar just to reach down in there and Tamp it down a little bit in case we got some air trapped or anything try to get all the sides just like that double- checking my uh bubbles again my string line I'm a little bit tight on it right about there my bubbles are good so I'm going to mix up another bag uh because I've got the other post ready as well I'll top this pole off and whatever's left I can start that other post with So Okay so we've uh placed the concrete in around there and tamped it down now I'm just going to uh use the end of this piece of wood just to kind of smooth things out I'm also creating a bit of a slope away from the pole with the concrete so water isn't sitting against the pole trying to get this below grade as well so we can just put a little bit of top soil on top of that so you can see I'm just getting a bit of slope there so uh water doesn't sit right against the pole okay and I've left it down enough that when we're done we can just throw a bit of dirt over that and uh it'll kind of finish it off just scrape some of this excess off the pull okay I'll get the other one done up and uh then we'll be good to go okay so we got our posts all set we've uh let them sit here for about 30 minutes we've got a quick setting concrete so uh everything's pretty solid already uh while we were waiting we did some marking out for all the rail pieces and the heights of our post and that sort of thing so what we were able to do is off of that fence use reference points and we uh just ran a string line off those reference points across to our far post over here and we used a uh string line level on the string which is just a little vial with a bubble in it and I got the line level then marked the positions on our post so so we've got a line here for the top of our post for for height and we've got a line way down here which is the top of our bottom rail and you can see we've actually installed one of them already okay so the next thing I want to do is actually cut this post off we've cut the other ones already and we marked a a line right around the post to give us a reference to cut to because the saw isn't going to cut right through in one cut I'm going to have to cut one side and then go around to the other side and cut and also what I like to do is just slightly put a little bit of a uh like an angle on the top of the post so that water doesn't just sit on the post and soak in it will actually want to run off so our line is actually level so what I'll do is I want I'm going to have the post all slope to the back here I'm actually going to start out on this side of the line and finish out on the top side of the line over there just to give about an eighth of an inch drop from front to back so I'm just going to do this with the uh cordless skill saw this post is a little wet okay so there's one cut and I'll just do the same thing on the other side and uh hopefully we end up pretty flat on the top oh can't get any better than that so like I said what I was hoping is that our two saw marks would line up pretty good and uh there's barely even a ridge there so that's beautiful that's uh lucky is what that is quite honestly um Okay so we've got the height of this post or actually all the posts cut off so we can uh I'll go down here and I'll put in my bottom rail for this piece and then we'll come back and do the top rails and uh go from there so I'm just lining it up to the lines that we put on there it's nice tight fit and as well with these boards because they're sitting horizontally I want to just slightly just slightly tip them so water will run off and it'll uh just reduce uh the chance of rot okay so I've got nice snug snug fit in there okay so we fit it in there snug uh we're just double checking cameraman figured it didn't look uh quite level but uh and I double checked it it is it's just I think the slope of the ground is making it look a little off so I'm going to toenail screw in one screw on each side and I'm using these ceramic coated nails or screws sorry uh the wood and the like these 2x4s and the pickets aren't pressure treated that we're using but the posts are and it's a little bit corrosive to a standard deck screw so so we're using these uh other screws to be sure that they don't Cod and uh break off over time okay so there's our bottom uh bottom Runner now the top ones are just going to sit right on here like this I'm just going to get myself set up over here and we have a nail here still where we had the uh string line set up so I just had to pull that out so this will sit halfway on the pole over there and line up with where we had our nail for the string line on this side and that actually will be the bottom I guess just like so just wanted to get it started there I'll just double check that with the level just to be sure String Line isn't 100% accurate so yeah I'm actually probably a little high over there but I'll get a screw in this end and then I'll adjust that end so I'm just splitting the difference on the top of this post coming out flush here and it looks like I've got to come down here a little bit right about right about there should be good a couple more screws okay and then we've got a top rail for the next space it's it's here and here so these two will butt together like so and I'm actually just a hair short on this top one make sure my poles Plum actually my pole can go over just a hair so suck it over okay so we're pretty good there now something that I like to do is I'm going to add another underneath of here I'm going to add another rail in standing up like this uh made out of 2x4 what that does it'll fit between the posts it'll get screwed down screwed on through the top rail into it and uh because it's going to hang down the 3 and 1/2 in way this direction it gives some strength to this so you don't get this the sections of fence sagging over time so it'll just uh beef it up a little bit so I didn't uh get those pre-cut so I'll have to pre-cut those and then we'll uh come back and install it okay so we're back we uh went ahead off off the uh film there and uh put the rails on finished all the rails up so you can see we've got our our our horizontal flat rail on the top and and one down there and then we've got a vertical one here like I said just to give this some strength so this doesn't want to Sag over time you could put one of these down on the at the bottom as well if you wanted to just for a little extra support or you could even have this one turned the other direction uh but I find this setup generally works pretty decent um then as well what we did is we set up a string line which is right here don't know if you can see it right here from end to end and that's indicating the top height of our actual pickets uh we've got our pickets just roughly cut to height so uh because what I did is is I cut the little Corners off the top I'll show you that after so now with this String Line in place we can determine what we want to cut our pickets to for actual height because we've got a little bit of a ground difference here um I'm going to have to cut the first couple here a little bit longer and then I can go a fair Fairways with uh all the same length of pickets there uh basically what you don't want is you don't want the ends of the pickets to be in the ground because they're just going to rot off uh so it's nice to be up you know half inch to an inch even off the ground and that way uh they have a chance to dry out and they don't rot nearly as fast something else I should mention if you probably noticed all the uh pieces that are uh first coated in white paint are uh just Spruce Lumber as well as what the that's what the pickets will be in this case and the reason I first coated everything is so that when I put the pickets up here I've got a painton paint contact there won't be any bare wood in behind the pickets so I like to first coat everything just laid out on some saw horses put it all together and then everything's got that coat of paint I I didn't bother with the posts at this point because they're already pressure treated so they've got that protection on there they will get painted or stained or whatever you're going to do to match after after the fact uh because everything will need to be done one more time once it's put together so uh so I thought that was worth touching base on so right now I've just uh deter going to determine the height of my pickets here uh we've got the string line there to tell us height right now uh right here at this post I'm basically 57 in off the ground but then you come over here I'm 56 already and 55 there so it changes pretty drastically right here so these first three or so I'm going to just stagger them a little bit difference in height and then like I said I can cut quite a number here through the middle all the same length so so I'm going to go to the saw cut them off um once I cut the bottoms I'm going to paint that bottom because we don't want that raw wood down there either so paint it or stain it before you put it up so I'm going to do that I'm going to get a little bit of this going and then we'll come back and I'll show you exactly how I got to that point Okay so we've got a bunch of pickets cut we've started uh installing some of them there there already so we're just bringing them up to our string line here to get the height looking pretty even we've uh cut the bottoms off and painted them our tops uh like I was mentioning earlier I just cut the corners off as a little bit of design uh it's kind of Limitless as far as any style you want to do on the fence this is a pretty basic white picket fence that we're doing uh I'm using a uh just a piece of the pickets so 3/4 qu of an inch uh spacers and I've just got them cut so they just sit nicely right on the rails and stay there so it's kind of a oneman thing uh right now I'm just tacking the pickets all in place with my uh with my uh brad nailer uh just as a temporary it just speeds things up then I'll go back and I I like to have my uh I screw my pickets on and I like to have the screws looking nice and straight so I can go back and take a little more time with that this just leaves a small little little nail hole that nobody's going to notice after a while so just simply butt it up against the uh the uh spacers I have there and I'm just putting uh one Brad nail top and bottom each just it's just to temporarily hold it there move my spacers over grab my next picket and do do it all again so I'm just putting against the spacers sliding it up or down till it's good with the string line it works works quite good it's fairly efficient this way one person can do most of this work on their own you know a few evenings after work or whatever go out and you get your P your uh your fence all done on your own and then the kids can paint it okay so I've got those tacked in now we've come to a point where I've got the uh pressure treated post here and I want to just paint that face of that post cuz it's going to show through on the uh the space where the next picket is so I'll just quickly give this a little shot so it whites out it's just easier to do it now than uh once there's another picket in the way okay just like that move my pickets over so I can reach them after every few you know 10 boards or so just uh I won't put it on this one cuz it's wet but just throw your level on just to double check that you're staying Plum uh sometimes it you can get thrown off and uh you haven't noticed it now my post is kind of in the way so I've just got to stand that spacer in here now we're away from the post so my spacer should work just fine again just double check your line every now and again make sure it isn't caught up somewhere along the way and throwing you off sometimes it gets caught on a sliver or something and you didn't notice and then it before you realize you've got a bunch of pickets up and uh oops I must have missed back in there yeah before you know it you've got a bunch of pickets up and they're all wrong so at least with the brad nailer here it'll be easy to knock them off if you do make mistake some of the boards I was able to get double coated so I'm putting those sides facing back against the wood that's uh that makes up the rails and that so so pretty basic I'm just going to go along and finish this these last few up that I have painted and ready to go okay so you get the idea I've just got to cut a few more to finish this section off and uh then we can go back get our screws in and we've just about got the the main part of the fence done okay so we've uh put a bunch more of the pickets on I've actually even done some of the screws we're left with the last picket here uh the space left over I just ripped the picket down to make it work the right way had another ear on the side so that it uh looks the same as all the rest so I'll just uh slide into to position here and I took my string lying down so just eyeball this one up something like that okay so for my uh for all the screws which I already already did all the other pickets I'm a little picky this way I like it to look straight so I just make up what I call a simple J go of some scraps that we're laying around here so basically all this does it's made so it can hang on each picket and I've got pencil Marks here and here for the top row of screws and pencil Marks here and here for the bottom row so I just Center it up on the picket give myself a little little uh Mark where they're going to be this pick it's a little different cuz it's narrower but it simply works on everyone you can hang it on there mark each one and uh all your screws are nice and straight and look uniform so I'm just going to throw uh some screws into this and then uh we can do a wrap up okay so like I said we've got the fence all done maybe I'll just uh the camera wants to go over against the house I'll just show what I did there to finish things up so same idea I just I just figured out this is going to be a gate and uh you'll see that in our other video I just figured out how the gate was going to work out and then I placed started my pickets over here where I needed to be cut the one against the house and fasten the ball on on the back side if the camera can make it through the gate here oops without falling on the back side you can see I I did the same thing as what we had over there we've got a a flat uh rail we've got a vertical rail down below and I actually did exactly the same thing on the very bottom you probably won't be able to see that to fasten those in I used some PL adhesive some uh construction adhesive on top of the post and I used long screws they're uh 4 and 1/2 in or sorry 5 in Long through the post right into the ends just to solid that up you can see the post is moving but you know that block isn't wobbly or anything plus once you put your pickets on it solids it up so okay so that's uh I guess we can come right around back out front get back in the shade where it's a little cooler so uh that's our basic white picket fence video uh like I said earlier in the video there's all kinds of different styles and designs you can do with lattice work or uh rails that are exposed all that kind of stuff so pick your design basic principles are are pretty much the same as far as getting your post in and everything uh we went 3T deep I like to do that makes your post just a little bit more solid you go a couple feet and after a couple years it gets a little wobbly so so that's good so so uh uh the only other thing I wanted to talk about is just before you start your project we already talked about looking at your uh underground utilities and that sort of thing making sure you aren't going to hit anything like that but also check with your M municipality your City to uh make sure that um you know there's no uh bylaws that you're going to break as far as the height of the fence or the how close you are to a street or an alley or that sort of thing so just uh check that you know I know in our area if you've got a pool or a hot tub you're supposed to have I believe it's a minimum 6 high fence with locking Gates so just little things like that you hate to go through to all this work and find out you don't meet regulations for your area so so I appreciate you watching the video uh we are going to have a gate building video for this exact fence so uh check that out if you're interested and also you can go to our Forum on the website at house-improvements.com and check out uh our Forum any other articles we have and you're already on our YouTube channel I think so uh check out our other videos thanks for watchinghi I'm Shannon from host improvements.com and today I just want to show you through this video how to build fence we've got a situation where we want to actually erect a piece of fence from the existing over to the house so to do that uh the one of the main things that I U started out by doing was determining obviously where I wanted the fence and uh running a string line across the ground and then marking out where my post locations were going to be now you can see here this would be one of my post locations uh it might be a little difficult to see with the shade here but I've circled the area I put an X and I've actually got a a nail in the ground so that's Center of post so that's my first post coming off the existing fence there's also another post going to be right here on the right hand side side of the sidewalk and then I've already installed the post beside the house so for our fence we're we're basically going to be using 4x4 pressure treated posts in this case our fence is approximately 5 ft tall and we're putting the posts about 3 ft into the ground and concreting them in so you can see like I said I've got the one post already done um the next next uh basic thing that I want to do at this point is I want to uh drill these holes and I'm going to do that by hand and we'll show that uh before you do any kind of fencing or anything where you're digging in the ground you need to contact uh any utility companies have them come out and mark the area make sure there's no gas lines phone uh water sewer power any of that kind of stuff in the area where you're going to be drilling uh you want to definitely stay away from that so make sure you have that all marked out before you start in this case uh we had them come out there's nothing in this area other than uh an accessory water line that goes to a front tap that I found underground when I did that post so uh uh but as far as phone lines and power and gas and any of that kind of thing there's nothing in this area so so we're good to go so uh we'll probably reposition the camera and start out by drilling this first hole so the three different uh tools that were might be needed to do this uh job here today is uh post hole scoop just a normal shovel and then a handheld uh post hole digger uh the reason we're using these and not something uh Power is uh just that these are more likely to be handy for the diyre to get a hold of uh you can rent uh portable augers or have a piece of equipment come in with an augur to drill these holes as well if you have the AC accessibility to do it but uh we're going to do it the oldfashioned way here today and uh that way you can kind of see how it's done so I'm going to start out uh because I've got lots of room here to work uh I'm going to start out with this post hole um augur I guess you'd call it uh the one issue we're probably going to have is we're going to find that we're going to have some roots from this large tree that's right close by so uh we'll just uh deal with those as we come to them if if they develop uh usually uh if you start hitting that sort of thing I can stick a reip saw down in the hole and and uh remove the root out of that area and and keep going so hopefully we don't have too many troubles with that so what I want to do is uh I just I already pulled the nail out of my Center Mark there I want to place the augur rate on that point and just give it a few twists takes a little bit to get it started just concentrate on trying to keep it in in uh your Center Mark area there where you started so now that it's basically started to root itself down into the ground I'm also applying pretty good amount of pressure down as I'm twisting and you can see it just kind of works its way into the ground bringing some soil up when the shovel part of it gets full you can just lift it up and uh toss that soil to the side now you might need some of that soil afterwards so don't uh send it too far away so I'll just continue on like this and uh we'll see if we come across any routes so far I'm only hitting quite small ones so it's it's not being an issue and uh remember I'm shooting to go down about 3 ft so it it does take a bit of time in this case uh we only have two to do here we'll probably speed up a lot of this um uh yeah I think that's all I really need to say I'm just going to get to work one thing that's worth mentioning is as you're using any of these tools we want to be trying to drill or uh dig the most vertical ho hole we can so that we can uh set our post in easily so that's one thing to concentrate on is keeping the shaft of the tool you're using vertical in uh both directions or all directions so that you have a nice straight hole Okay so we've got this first hole complete I don't know that may be an actual time took uh couple minutes really wasn't n too bad other than being out of breath uh right now I'm at about uh 372 in approximately deep so I'm happy with that uh all we luckily ran into was a few small Roots like that that just tore apart as we uh as we Twisted through it we didn't run into any water that can be an issue sometimes you may uh you know hit uh groundwater level or whatever so um if that's a if that's a problem you you need to try to get some of that water out if it's just a little bit of moisture and you're cementing in your post anyways not really a big issue uh if the hole fills up with water well yes you're going to have to try to pump that out or at least Pump It Down get your post in there and get everything set before it fills up too much again um we're drilling uh this this tool here is adjust UST able in the size of the hole basically we're we end up with close to an 8 in hole basically an 8 in round hole uh we're putting a 4x4 post into that so like I said you want to be as vertical and Plum as you can with your hole otherwise you're going to have issues with getting your post in there um as far as putting your posts in and and getting them in place there's a couple different things you can do we're going to concrete ours into place with just some bags of concrete mix for post um another thing you could do is set your post in and Tamp in uh PE PE gravel or uh uh you know rock or something around so you put in a layer Tamp it with a post or a little stick put in some more Tamp it and actually you can get really solid posts that way um we're going to use Concrete in this case um just because that's what I kind of prefer to do and uh with a pressure treated post it's going to last for years and years it'll probably Outlast the rest of the fence the post itself so Okay so we've got our uh our first one drilled here I'm going to go over get that one drilled and then when we come back I'll show actually getting the posts in the holes and uh mixing the smant and pouring it okay so on this hole I just want to show you a couple uh couple um shots of me using this particular tool it's kind of a clam type shovel so what you're going to do is you'd want to uh I'll just go over here in the bare dirt you want to just stab it down in the area you want then you squeeze the handles apart and it actually picks up mouthfuls of dirt so if you were uh you know restricted to the amount of room you had and you couldn't maybe turn the handle on the other Digger that you just watched me use you could use this or maybe you got a lot of loose dirt down in the bottom of the hole you I could stick this down that existing hole and and get that dirt out of the bottom but you can you can do a hole this way too just a little trick here to get started so you just want to stab it in at your location squeeze this isn't a bad idea to uh use this just to get the hole started before you use the other one cuz it kind of gets you a nice clean spot that your uh drill should just go directly into so anyways that's that's using that I don't think I really need to use that in this case but it did did get me a nice spot to uh start this hole Okay so we've got both our holes drilled uh in that other hole we did run into some uh or at least one pretty good size route so I just took the reip saw with the Long Blade and cut that route off so uh not a big deal it's just a matter of getting around it uh next step is I've just thrown the post Loosely in the holes and I put up the string line down here so this string line I moved because before sorry I'm just sitting on my knife here before I was using the string line as a center mark across here to get the hole position so now what I did is I move that string line out to the front edge of the post and I'm using it to get the post all straight in a line uh the reason obviously I can't use the center line mark because the post would be in the way every time so now I can uh get the post positioned over to the line and uh centered up in the hole if you're uh if you're needing to space your post a really specific distance apart then I suggest you maybe cut some uh temporary braces or have your sex some people will buy the sections of fence that are already made up from uh the box stores then you want to kind of use them to gauge the distance this way side to side for your distance of your post but in our case uh there's no real rocket science to where we're going we're approximately 7 ft apart I wouldn't go any more than 8 ft 6 to 7 ft is a nice distance uh uh most of your fencing pre-made products are set up for 8ft sections but uh so anyways we're we're about 7 ft between a post so that you know that isn't too critical in our case so we've got our String Line I've attached it over there on the existing fence and then over on our first fence pole that I put in uh which was kind of why I put that post in uh yesterday was so that we could use it uh without having to put a steak in the ground and all that kind of stuff so we've got it all there to uh give us our our straight line okay so uh I just also want to talk about this little level here that I have and you can buy these at any hardware store just about and it's it's made for going onto fence post so it's got a a level vial that on that side and this side so you can hold your post and check without moving like if you have a handheld level you'd have to you know check this side then check this side and in the meantime the post has moved on you where with this I use a strap to hold it on and I can uh look at this vial get it nice there take a peek over at the other one adjust where I need to do all without having to move a hand level so and at the same time when you're doing all that you're also trying to watch that string to make sure you get the pole over to where it needs to be on the string line so uh anyways that's that's what the level's all about so what you want to do is uh get your uh your post close get your concrete mixed up in the wheelbarrow or a bucket or whatever you're going to mix it in so it's ready to go and uh then fine-tune your post and start putting the concrete in around the hole um some people will uh just open up the dry powdered concrete post mix dump it in the hole and fill the hole with water and maybe prod it with a rod or something uh I guess that works works but it's uh you don't know if you're mixing the whole batch of concrete or not it could you could just be mixing the top two or three inches and the rest is staying dry so it's nice to mix it out of the hole and then place it into the hole so so I'm just going to do that in a wheelbarrow so I'll just move my Barrel out here uh just got to get my water a little closer okay so I got my water a little handier now got a shovel just to do the mixing I'm just going to wet my wheelbarrow down a little bit just so the uh concrete doesn't stick badly to it I'll put on my safety glasses concrete dust can be uh a little corrosive so you don't want to get in your eyes I'm just going to rip the bag open of course all that's blowing right at the cameraman Okay so we've got our uh concrete mix our post mix in the wheelbarrow I'm just going to create a little bit of a volcano in there and uh turn the water pressure down so I don't Splash it and I'm going to add about uh a liter and a half or so of water uhoh got some air in the line there we go and I created that volcano just to kind of hold the water in there and then I just want to use the shovel and turn the mix getting the water all uh mixed in nicely with the powder P we have so you can see how it's starting to mix in there I'll create another volcano I'm going to add about another liter or so you can have this pretty runny need a lot more water than that yet it's a little runny for this uh application it actually works nice for getting it in the hole apparently you can't hear me when I'm scraping uh you want to have this mix pretty runny so it just makes it easier in this case when you're putting it in the hole so just keep turning it so you're not getting any of that power coming up pretty good I'll just add a little bit more so I maybe added uh I don't know approximately 3 L of water or so now this particular post uh mix is a fairly quick setup so I don't want to waste too much time so that looks pretty good to me we'll give it a try anyways so I can go back to my post here just double check that I'm good on my line and I'm good Plum both ways and I'll drop a little bit of mix down there try to get a little bit on each side each side of the post just uh if you get a little bit to start with on each side of the post kind of keeps that bottom from moving on you so we're actually pretty nice here and it's going to I'm sure take more than a bag probably a bag and a half just make sure you aren't pushing your line make sure your uh levels are good I'm a little bit offset in the hole as it worked out so it's a little tighter right on this side but it's all right we can deal with that trying not to get too much dirt going in the hole let SC that concrete off the line make sure I'm not pushing the line okay our bubbles are looking pretty good so I'll add the rest of what was in this bag or in this wheelbarrow in okay so I've got pretty much that whole bag in there now I just want to uh cuz it's hard to see down in there you don't really know what you're doing when you've dropped that concrete and then I'm just going to use this piece of rebar just to reach down in there and Tamp it down a little bit in case we got some air trapped or anything try to get all the sides just like that double- checking my uh bubbles again my string line I'm a little bit tight on it right about there my bubbles are good so I'm going to mix up another bag uh because I've got the other post ready as well I'll top this pole off and whatever's left I can start that other post with So Okay so we've uh placed the concrete in around there and tamped it down now I'm just going to uh use the end of this piece of wood just to kind of smooth things out I'm also creating a bit of a slope away from the pole with the concrete so water isn't sitting against the pole trying to get this below grade as well so we can just put a little bit of top soil on top of that so you can see I'm just getting a bit of slope there so uh water doesn't sit right against the pole okay and I've left it down enough that when we're done we can just throw a bit of dirt over that and uh it'll kind of finish it off just scrape some of this excess off the pull okay I'll get the other one done up and uh then we'll be good to go okay so we got our posts all set we've uh let them sit here for about 30 minutes we've got a quick setting concrete so uh everything's pretty solid already uh while we were waiting we did some marking out for all the rail pieces and the heights of our post and that sort of thing so what we were able to do is off of that fence use reference points and we uh just ran a string line off those reference points across to our far post over here and we used a uh string line level on the string which is just a little vial with a bubble in it and I got the line level then marked the positions on our post so so we've got a line here for the top of our post for for height and we've got a line way down here which is the top of our bottom rail and you can see we've actually installed one of them already okay so the next thing I want to do is actually cut this post off we've cut the other ones already and we marked a a line right around the post to give us a reference to cut to because the saw isn't going to cut right through in one cut I'm going to have to cut one side and then go around to the other side and cut and also what I like to do is just slightly put a little bit of a uh like an angle on the top of the post so that water doesn't just sit on the post and soak in it will actually want to run off so our line is actually level so what I'll do is I want I'm going to have the post all slope to the back here I'm actually going to start out on this side of the line and finish out on the top side of the line over there just to give about an eighth of an inch drop from front to back so I'm just going to do this with the uh cordless skill saw this post is a little wet okay so there's one cut and I'll just do the same thing on the other side and uh hopefully we end up pretty flat on the top oh can't get any better than that so like I said what I was hoping is that our two saw marks would line up pretty good and uh there's barely even a ridge there so that's beautiful that's uh lucky is what that is quite honestly um Okay so we've got the height of this post or actually all the posts cut off so we can uh I'll go down here and I'll put in my bottom rail for this piece and then we'll come back and do the top rails and uh go from there so I'm just lining it up to the lines that we put on there it's nice tight fit and as well with these boards because they're sitting horizontally I want to just slightly just slightly tip them so water will run off and it'll uh just reduce uh the chance of rot okay so I've got nice snug snug fit in there okay so we fit it in there snug uh we're just double checking cameraman figured it didn't look uh quite level but uh and I double checked it it is it's just I think the slope of the ground is making it look a little off so I'm going to toenail screw in one screw on each side and I'm using these ceramic coated nails or screws sorry uh the wood and the like these 2x4s and the pickets aren't pressure treated that we're using but the posts are and it's a little bit corrosive to a standard deck screw so so we're using these uh other screws to be sure that they don't Cod and uh break off over time okay so there's our bottom uh bottom Runner now the top ones are just going to sit right on here like this I'm just going to get myself set up over here and we have a nail here still where we had the uh string line set up so I just had to pull that out so this will sit halfway on the pole over there and line up with where we had our nail for the string line on this side and that actually will be the bottom I guess just like so just wanted to get it started there I'll just double check that with the level just to be sure String Line isn't 100% accurate so yeah I'm actually probably a little high over there but I'll get a screw in this end and then I'll adjust that end so I'm just splitting the difference on the top of this post coming out flush here and it looks like I've got to come down here a little bit right about right about there should be good a couple more screws okay and then we've got a top rail for the next space it's it's here and here so these two will butt together like so and I'm actually just a hair short on this top one make sure my poles Plum actually my pole can go over just a hair so suck it over okay so we're pretty good there now something that I like to do is I'm going to add another underneath of here I'm going to add another rail in standing up like this uh made out of 2x4 what that does it'll fit between the posts it'll get screwed down screwed on through the top rail into it and uh because it's going to hang down the 3 and 1/2 in way this direction it gives some strength to this so you don't get this the sections of fence sagging over time so it'll just uh beef it up a little bit so I didn't uh get those pre-cut so I'll have to pre-cut those and then we'll uh come back and install it okay so we're back we uh went ahead off off the uh film there and uh put the rails on finished all the rails up so you can see we've got our our our horizontal flat rail on the top and and one down there and then we've got a vertical one here like I said just to give this some strength so this doesn't want to Sag over time you could put one of these down on the at the bottom as well if you wanted to just for a little extra support or you could even have this one turned the other direction uh but I find this setup generally works pretty decent um then as well what we did is we set up a string line which is right here don't know if you can see it right here from end to end and that's indicating the top height of our actual pickets uh we've got our pickets just roughly cut to height so uh because what I did is is I cut the little Corners off the top I'll show you that after so now with this String Line in place we can determine what we want to cut our pickets to for actual height because we've got a little bit of a ground difference here um I'm going to have to cut the first couple here a little bit longer and then I can go a fair Fairways with uh all the same length of pickets there uh basically what you don't want is you don't want the ends of the pickets to be in the ground because they're just going to rot off uh so it's nice to be up you know half inch to an inch even off the ground and that way uh they have a chance to dry out and they don't rot nearly as fast something else I should mention if you probably noticed all the uh pieces that are uh first coated in white paint are uh just Spruce Lumber as well as what the that's what the pickets will be in this case and the reason I first coated everything is so that when I put the pickets up here I've got a painton paint contact there won't be any bare wood in behind the pickets so I like to first coat everything just laid out on some saw horses put it all together and then everything's got that coat of paint I I didn't bother with the posts at this point because they're already pressure treated so they've got that protection on there they will get painted or stained or whatever you're going to do to match after after the fact uh because everything will need to be done one more time once it's put together so uh so I thought that was worth touching base on so right now I've just uh deter going to determine the height of my pickets here uh we've got the string line there to tell us height right now uh right here at this post I'm basically 57 in off the ground but then you come over here I'm 56 already and 55 there so it changes pretty drastically right here so these first three or so I'm going to just stagger them a little bit difference in height and then like I said I can cut quite a number here through the middle all the same length so so I'm going to go to the saw cut them off um once I cut the bottoms I'm going to paint that bottom because we don't want that raw wood down there either so paint it or stain it before you put it up so I'm going to do that I'm going to get a little bit of this going and then we'll come back and I'll show you exactly how I got to that point Okay so we've got a bunch of pickets cut we've started uh installing some of them there there already so we're just bringing them up to our string line here to get the height looking pretty even we've uh cut the bottoms off and painted them our tops uh like I was mentioning earlier I just cut the corners off as a little bit of design uh it's kind of Limitless as far as any style you want to do on the fence this is a pretty basic white picket fence that we're doing uh I'm using a uh just a piece of the pickets so 3/4 qu of an inch uh spacers and I've just got them cut so they just sit nicely right on the rails and stay there so it's kind of a oneman thing uh right now I'm just tacking the pickets all in place with my uh with my uh brad nailer uh just as a temporary it just speeds things up then I'll go back and I I like to have my uh I screw my pickets on and I like to have the screws looking nice and straight so I can go back and take a little more time with that this just leaves a small little little nail hole that nobody's going to notice after a while so just simply butt it up against the uh the uh spacers I have there and I'm just putting uh one Brad nail top and bottom each just it's just to temporarily hold it there move my spacers over grab my next picket and do do it all again so I'm just putting against the spacers sliding it up or down till it's good with the string line it works works quite good it's fairly efficient this way one person can do most of this work on their own you know a few evenings after work or whatever go out and you get your P your uh your fence all done on your own and then the kids can paint it okay so I've got those tacked in now we've come to a point where I've got the uh pressure treated post here and I want to just paint that face of that post cuz it's going to show through on the uh the space where the next picket is so I'll just quickly give this a little shot so it whites out it's just easier to do it now than uh once there's another picket in the way okay just like that move my pickets over so I can reach them after every few you know 10 boards or so just uh I won't put it on this one cuz it's wet but just throw your level on just to double check that you're staying Plum uh sometimes it you can get thrown off and uh you haven't noticed it now my post is kind of in the way so I've just got to stand that spacer in here now we're away from the post so my spacer should work just fine again just double check your line every now and again make sure it isn't caught up somewhere along the way and throwing you off sometimes it gets caught on a sliver or something and you didn't notice and then it before you realize you've got a bunch of pickets up and uh oops I must have missed back in there yeah before you know it you've got a bunch of pickets up and they're all wrong so at least with the brad nailer here it'll be easy to knock them off if you do make mistake some of the boards I was able to get double coated so I'm putting those sides facing back against the wood that's uh that makes up the rails and that so so pretty basic I'm just going to go along and finish this these last few up that I have painted and ready to go okay so you get the idea I've just got to cut a few more to finish this section off and uh then we can go back get our screws in and we've just about got the the main part of the fence done okay so we've uh put a bunch more of the pickets on I've actually even done some of the screws we're left with the last picket here uh the space left over I just ripped the picket down to make it work the right way had another ear on the side so that it uh looks the same as all the rest so I'll just uh slide into to position here and I took my string lying down so just eyeball this one up something like that okay so for my uh for all the screws which I already already did all the other pickets I'm a little picky this way I like it to look straight so I just make up what I call a simple J go of some scraps that we're laying around here so basically all this does it's made so it can hang on each picket and I've got pencil Marks here and here for the top row of screws and pencil Marks here and here for the bottom row so I just Center it up on the picket give myself a little little uh Mark where they're going to be this pick it's a little different cuz it's narrower but it simply works on everyone you can hang it on there mark each one and uh all your screws are nice and straight and look uniform so I'm just going to throw uh some screws into this and then uh we can do a wrap up okay so like I said we've got the fence all done maybe I'll just uh the camera wants to go over against the house I'll just show what I did there to finish things up so same idea I just I just figured out this is going to be a gate and uh you'll see that in our other video I just figured out how the gate was going to work out and then I placed started my pickets over here where I needed to be cut the one against the house and fasten the ball on on the back side if the camera can make it through the gate here oops without falling on the back side you can see I I did the same thing as what we had over there we've got a a flat uh rail we've got a vertical rail down below and I actually did exactly the same thing on the very bottom you probably won't be able to see that to fasten those in I used some PL adhesive some uh construction adhesive on top of the post and I used long screws they're uh 4 and 1/2 in or sorry 5 in Long through the post right into the ends just to solid that up you can see the post is moving but you know that block isn't wobbly or anything plus once you put your pickets on it solids it up so okay so that's uh I guess we can come right around back out front get back in the shade where it's a little cooler so uh that's our basic white picket fence video uh like I said earlier in the video there's all kinds of different styles and designs you can do with lattice work or uh rails that are exposed all that kind of stuff so pick your design basic principles are are pretty much the same as far as getting your post in and everything uh we went 3T deep I like to do that makes your post just a little bit more solid you go a couple feet and after a couple years it gets a little wobbly so so that's good so so uh uh the only other thing I wanted to talk about is just before you start your project we already talked about looking at your uh underground utilities and that sort of thing making sure you aren't going to hit anything like that but also check with your M municipality your City to uh make sure that um you know there's no uh bylaws that you're going to break as far as the height of the fence or the how close you are to a street or an alley or that sort of thing so just uh check that you know I know in our area if you've got a pool or a hot tub you're supposed to have I believe it's a minimum 6 high fence with locking Gates so just little things like that you hate to go through to all this work and find out you don't meet regulations for your area so so I appreciate you watching the video uh we are going to have a gate building video for this exact fence so uh check that out if you're interested and also you can go to our Forum on the website at house-improvements.com and check out uh our Forum any other articles we have and you're already on our YouTube channel I think so uh check out our other videos thanks for watching\n"